From His Heart with Jeff Schreve

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today on from His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreeve. Learn
what happens when God shapes the house.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Here's our question for today. What if we prayed like
they prayed like the Early Church prayed. God had used
them in such a way to make them so bold
that they upset the world with their teaching and many
came to faith in Christ. What do you think God

(00:27):
could do? What do you think He would do in
our lives, in our lives together in our church if
we prayed like they prayed.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
In the Early Church, the Disciples ask God for boldness
so they could speak the truth of the Gospel, and
God powerfully answered their prayer. Would you like to have
that same power today? Thank you for joining us today
on from His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreeve as he
shares three truths concerning the Disciples prayer in Acts chapter four,

(01:22):
a prayer God longs to answer.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
For all believers.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Now, this is part one of the last message in
the series that we've been in all month, called Bold
as a Lion. Will have part two tomorrow. Of course,
you can get the entire unedited series in the format
of your choice for your gift of any amount to
from His Heart this month, and we want to thank
you for that support that you can give when you
go to from His Heart dot Org. First, though, open

(01:48):
your Bible to Acts chapter four, as Pastor Jeff begins
the lesson called when God Shakes the House.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Scottish theologian Sir Jorge Adam Smith was climbing the Vice
Horn mountain in the Swedish Alps. This one is fourteen
seven and eighty three feet above sea level. Is a
big deal to climb that mountain. Takes hours and hours
and hours to do it. Well. Sir George Adam Smith

(02:19):
was with his guide and he was climbing the mountain.
They finally got to the top, and it was a
very stormy day. They get to the top and he
is just rejoicing and he gets to the top and
he jumps up for joy that he conquered that mountain.
And when he did, the wind almost blew him off

(02:40):
the mountain. The guide had to grab him and pull
him down, and the guide said to him, on your knees, sir,
you are safe here only on your knees. I thought,
what a great analogy, what a great story for us today,
because we need to be encouraged to pray. The only

(03:03):
safe ground in our walk with the Lord is when
we're on praying ground, when we're on our knees. And
today we want to finish this series with a message
on prayer, praying for boldness. It's exactly what the Disciples did,
what the early Church did. They would ask God to
help them to be bold, because you know what, they're

(03:25):
not that much unlike us. They struggled with fear, just
like you struggle with fear, just like I struggle with fear,
just like we struggle with fear. And they were facing
dangerous times as they preached Jesus and the resurrection and
salvation only in His name, And so they had to
pray to God to give them boldness. And the Lord

(03:49):
answered when they prayed that prayer acts chapter four, verse
twenty nine. Here's the prayer. And now, Lord, take note
of their threats and grant that your bond servants may
speak your word with all confidence, with all boldness, while
you extend your hand to heal and signs and wonders
take place through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
And when they had prayed, the place where they had

(04:10):
gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of
God with boldness. Hey, a prayer for boldness is a
prayer God longs to answer. And so here's our question
for today. What if we prayed like they prayed, like
the early Church prayed? What do you think God could do?

(04:32):
What do you think He would do in our lives,
in our lives together in our church if we prayed
like they prayed. Because this little band of believers just
one hundred and twenty in Acts chapter one. By the
time you come to Acts chapter seventeen, Paul and Silas
on the second missionary journey, it was said of them,

(04:53):
these men who have come here have upset the world
with their preaching and tea. What a testimony that that's
what they had done. God had used them in such
a way to make them so bold that they upset
the world with their teaching, and many came to faith

(05:14):
in Christ. So we want to look today at this
prayer from Acts chapter four, and we want to discover
three truths concerning this prayer. Truth Number one, prayer that
connects with God to get him to shake the house,
so to speak, where God just answers so quickly, so

(05:36):
powerfully with a emphatic yes. Prayer that connects with God
is often fueled by trouble. We don't like trouble, but
trouble we have it in spades. Man who is born
of woman, Job said, is short lived and full of trouble,
full of turmoil, full of problems. And we're going to
see that. The early Church, right off the bat, they

(05:57):
started to have trouble. Now, when Jesus rose from the
dead Luke chapter twenty four, he met with the disciples
in the room that that Sunday night. Remember Thomas wasn't there,
he was a week late. But he met with them,
and he showed them that he was indeed alive. And
the Bible says they could not believe it for joy.

(06:18):
They were so stunned that he was there and that
he had risen from the dead. And Jesus said this,
he gave them a command to witness in his name,
to witness in his name, And he said this in
Luke twenty four. Thus it is written that the Christ

(06:39):
should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day,
and that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed
in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things. And then in Acts
chapter one, verse eight, you remember the timeline. So Jesus
rises on Sunday morning, he was crucified on Passover, he

(07:02):
rises on Sunday morning. He's with them for forty days
in different appearances, and then on the fortieth day he
ascends to heaven and he tells them, okay, you need
to wait in Jerusalem until you're clothed with power from
on high. And that happened ten days later on the
day of Pentecost, and that's when the Church was born,
and the Holy Spirit came not to just be upon people,

(07:23):
but to live inside people. And so it was fifty
days following his resurrection the Church was born. And not
much time has passed. And we see that Peter, who
was afraid to even say that he belonged to Jesus.
He christens War. I don't even know the man. Now
we see him in Acts chapter two, and he's a firehouse,

(07:45):
power house for the Lord because the Holy Spirit had
come upon him. You shall receive power, Jesus said, when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall
be my witnesses. Jerusalem Judea Samarian even to the remotest
parts of the earth. Well that's their marching orders from
the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But then
they run into trouble because Jesus tells them go and witness,

(08:10):
but the religious leaders, the Jewish religious leaders, tell him,
you better shut your mouth on this Jesus stuff. So
to understand the prayer in Acts four, you have to
understand what's going on. So Acts chapter two, the Church
is born, Peter preaches, and three thousand were saved and
baptized that day, and the Lord was adding to their

(08:31):
number day by day those who are being saved. The
churches is exploded, and one day had three thousand new members,
so three thousand plus the one twenty that they had
in Acts chapter one, and it's growing every day. People
are getting saved. Whacts chapter three, Peter and John go
to the temple to pray at the ninth hour, the
hour of prayer three pm. Remember they had There's this
beggar there at the beautiful Gate and he is begging,

(08:54):
and he's looking to Peter to give me something. And
Peter says, well, I don't have any gold or silver,
but what I have I give to you in the
name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene rise up and walk,
and he grabs him and he lifts the guy up,
and immediately the guy who had been crippled from his
mother's room, never walked a day in his life. All
of a sudden, his bones were strengthened, his muscles were restored,

(09:16):
and he is walking and leaping and praising God. And
this guy had been there day after day after day,
year after year after year. Everybody knew who this beggar
was at the beautiful Gate, and all of a sudden
they see this guy and they say, wow, what has happened.
There's a miracle took place at the temple. Not a

(09:37):
lot of miracles took place at the temple under Judaism,
but a miracle took place that day. And then Peter
uses that as a springboard to preach, and he's preaching,
and his preaching was always hard because you always tell him, listen,
you crucified the righteous one. You asked for a murderer
to be in the place of Jesus, the Prince of Life.

(09:58):
But God will save you. You have committed the terrible sin,
but God will save you. So lots of people were
gathering and the temple area. You have to remember, the
temple area is controlled by the chief priests. It's controlled
by the Sadducees. The chief priests were part of the Sadducees.
You know, you have the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Well,
the Sadducees, as the old joke goes, you know, they

(10:19):
don't believe in the resurrection. That's why they are sad
you see. And so that's a little way to remember that. Well,
so this guy is preaching Jesus and the resurrection, and
the Sadducees were principally involved. Most of the Sanhedron, the
seventy plus one the Jewish Supreme Court, most of the
seats on the Sadducees were on the Sanhedrin were made

(10:42):
up of Sadducees. And so they're like, wait a minute,
we've already crucified this guy, and now they're preaching that
he's alive and they're intending to bring his blood upon us.
And so they arrest Peter and John and the guy
that was healed. Evidently he gets arrested too. He just hey, okay, okay.

(11:04):
So then the next day they bring him before the Sanhedron,
and the Sanhedron that's an intimidating group. That's worse than
going to a deacons meeting. I mean, you go just teasing.
Our deacons are wonderful, but it can be intimidating sometimes.
And so they are put in the middle of these
seventy plus one and Caiaphas is there, and Annas, whose

(11:27):
father in law to Caiaphas, and it's the usual suspects,
all these guys who are principally involved in arresting Jesus
of saying that he is deserving of death, of taking
him to Pilot and putting pressure on Pilot to have
Jesus crucified. They're in front of those guys. It's been
just a short time, just a few months after the

(11:49):
crucifixion of Jesus. And Peter gets up and preaches, and
he said, if we're on trial today for the benefit
done to a sick man, let it be known to
you until all Israel that it's by the name of
Jesus Christ that this man has been made well. And
he says, Jesus was the stone that you the builders rejected,

(12:11):
but God raised him from the dead, and there is
salvation Acts four twelve in no one else, For there
is no other name under heaven that has been given
among men by which we must be saved. I mean,
you talk about a message that is bold. You talk
about a guy that's bold as a lion. The guy
that was frayed as a kitten when he was at
the fire when Jesus was being tried. Now he's bold

(12:33):
as a lion. And they look at him and they
recognize that he's an uneducated and untrained man. I like
the word in Greek for untrained means it's idiotas this
guy's an idiot, and he has such boldness and confidence,
and they recognized him as having been with Jesus, the

(12:54):
Bible says. And so they take them. They say, you
leave here for a minute. We have to confer. And
they start talking. They said, what are we going to do?
And note where the miracle has taken place, and we
can't deny it. We want to deny it, we can't
deny it. The guy everybody knows, this guy that was
dumped at the gate, beautiful, that was a beggar. Now
he can walk. So what are we going to do?

(13:14):
They're preaching Jesus. They're saying that there's a resurrection. We're saddacees.
We don't believe in the resurrection. And furthermore, we were
the ones that pushed Pilot to have Jesus crucified. So
they have a problem because there is unrest at the temple,
and the temple is their domain, and they're in cahoots
with Rome, and Rome overlooks things that they do and

(13:36):
they power around with Rome so that they can have
a cushy job and have they make money off of
the people at the temple. So there's a quid pro
quo working here. And so they said, what are we
going to do, Well, We'll just command them not to
speak anymore in Jesus's name. So you have a problem.
You have Jesus commanding his disciples to be his witness, is,

(14:00):
to proclaim his name, repentance in his name. And then
you have the religious leaders that they're commanding the disciples
to cease and desist. You stop right now, don't speak
anymore in Jesus's name. And so Peter and John say,
whether it's right in the side of God to obey
you or to obey God, you be the judge for

(14:21):
we cannot stop speaking what we've seen and heard. And
they threaten them further, and they let them go because
they what crime did they commit? They committed no crime.
And so when they are released they go back to
their companions for a prayer meeting. Well, here's the thing.
So they're being threatened to stop, and they're not being

(14:46):
threatened by the twelve year old bully down the street.
They're being threatened by the Sanhedrin, the guys that do
have the power to execute them. They can have them stoned,
they can have them killed. They are top echelon in Jerusalem.
So it's a real issue, and that's what fuels the

(15:07):
prayer time, that fuels the prayer meeting. Prayer that connects
with God is often fueled by trouble. You think about
in your own life. When do you pray the best
when everything's going great or when things are hard and difficult.
I heard about three pastors. They got together for lunch,
and they were sitting at the lunch table and the
table over to them from them was a telephone repairman

(15:30):
who was kind of eating by himself. And so these
pastors are eating, they're talking about the best posture for prayer.
You really want to connect with God, what kind of
posture do you need to have? The first guy said, well,
you know, if you really want to connect with God,
you need to get down on your knees. On your
knees is the posture that connects with God. And the
other pastor says, no, I disagree. I have found in

(15:53):
my life my best praying is done when I stand
on my feet and I lift my hands to the
Lord and I look into Heaven, and that's how the
best praying takes place. The third guy said, no, you're
both wrong. You need to get down on your face
before the Lord and just lie prone before the Lord,
and that's how the best praying takes place. Finally, the

(16:15):
telephone repairman couldn't take it anymore. He interrupted. He said, guys,
I don't mean to interrupt, but I got to tell
you something. The best praying I ever did was when
I was fifty feet up on a telephone poll hanging
upside down. That was when I really pray. When you're
in trouble, then you really pray. You get serious. So
the prayer that connects with God is fueled by trouble.

(16:38):
Second discovery, prayer that connects with God has a traceable pattern,
a traceable pattern. And you know, when you look at
the prayers in the Bible, you can see, well, how
did they do it? With these guys spent three and
a half years with Jesus. They saw how he prayed.
They gleaned from him, and so we can glean from
them to see how they did it the traceable pattern

(17:02):
verse twenty three. And when they had been released, they
went to their own companions and reported all that the
chief priests and the elders had said to them. And
when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God
with one accord, and said, Oh Lord, it is you
who made the heaven and the earth and the sea
and all that is in them, who, by the Holy Spirit,

(17:24):
through the mouth of our Father David, your servant, said,
why did the gentiles rage and the people's devise feudal things?
The kings of the earth took their stand, and the
rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.
For truly, in this city there were gathered together against
your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed both herod and

(17:44):
punches pilot, along with the gentiles and the peoples of
Israel to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined
to occur. That was the beginning of their prayer, and
that prayer has a traceable pattern. Now they don't get
into the requests until verse twenty nine. But let's learn
from their prayer and from the pattern of prayer. First

(18:06):
of all, the people are unified. So they get released
by the Sanhedrin, Peter and John, and they go to
home base. They go to the people, their companions, those
who are like minded, those who love the Lord with
all their hearts, and they declare to them, this is
what happened. This is what the chief priests and the

(18:27):
rulers said to us. This is how they were threatening us.
And once they report, then it says when they heard this,
they lifted their voices to God with one accord. The
people are unified. There is one accord that means one mind,
one purpose, one passion, says in verse thirty two of

(18:48):
chapter four. And the congregation of those who believe were
of one heart and soul, they're together, they're unified. Hey,
there's power when we pray together and there's unity. You
know what hurts a church so bad is when the
church starts getting fractured. And so here's the thing we
always say, listen, if you have a problem with a person,
another church member or a staff member, go talk to

(19:11):
the person, say hey, I don't understand about this. You
did this, or you said that, or you did whatever,
and talk to the person and listen. If you're walking
with God, and the staff members walking with God or
the other Christians walking with God will then then you
should be able to come to an agreement. Now you
may have a disagreement about well, you like chocolate ice

(19:31):
cream and I like strawberry. That's not a point of
breaking fellowship, right, that's not an issue of sin. That's
just an issue of personal preference. But if it's an
issue of sin, you go talk to the person. Well,
the church had power, the early church because they were unified,
and when a church loses unity, it loses power. Do

(19:53):
you remember as a kid when you would get a
magnifying glass, You know, I still remember as a kid,
my brother was showing me this magnifying glass and how
you could take harness the sun and burn leaves, and
then he would burn ants, and then he'd he's he
had some trouble, and I just you know, he just
starts burning me. You know, hey, does this heard? If

(20:16):
this this beam goes on your finger, yes, it starts
to burn. There's there's power.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
You know.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
You can be out in the sun, but you can't
be under a magnifying glass because that's all harnessed, that's
all unified, and it forms a powerful beam. Well, the
people were unified. That's the first thing we see about
their pattern in prayer. Secondly, the prayer begins with praise.
They don't just ask God, Lord, this is our request.

(20:43):
They just start praising the Lord. And it says in
verse twenty four, Oh Lord, it is you who made
the heaven and the earth and the sea and all
that is in them. They start off praising God, Oh Lord.
Now the normal word for Lord in the New Testament

(21:04):
is curios, but they don't use the word curios. They
use the word despotas or despotase is how you pronounce it.
That means we get our English word despot from that.
A despotase is an absolute ruler and master. And so
they were praising God. They call him Lord. You are

(21:26):
the absolute ruler and master. You are over everything, and
you're the God who created everything, the heaven and the
earth and the sea and all that is in them.
You are Creator, God, and they were praising the Lord
for who he is, for all the wonderful things that

(21:50):
he has done in creation.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Have you gotten to the place in your life where
you're praising God and the good times and the bad times. Well,
we should be doing that, and we pray that you've
learned that today as you've listened to this message called
When God Shakes the House, God does deserve our surrender
to his will, our praise, and our obedience. Again. This

(22:17):
message is one of six in Pastor Jeff's new series
Bold as a Lion. You see in the early Church,
the disciples ask God for boldness to speak the truth
of the Gospel, and God answered their prayer in a
powerful way. They were surely bold. He used them in
an incredible way, and they shared Christ with the lost
and dying world. It should be no surprise that God

(22:41):
wants you and me to do the same thing today.
In this new six lesson series, Pastor Jeff explores Bible
truths about the power of faith, the power of prayer,
and the power of a committed life to share your
love of Jesus without hesitating to get this series and
be empowered by the Holy Spirit to do all these things.

(23:04):
We'd like to send you the Bold is Allian series
as our thanks for your gift of support to From
His Heart this month of any amount. It's available in
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(23:26):
these programs are touching your heart and you want to
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gift today. To expand this outreach this year, just call
eight six six for zero Bible each six to six
for zero Bible and request the series Bold as a Lion.
You can also go online to from his Heart dot org.

(23:47):
I am Larry Nobles offering you a big thanks for
joining us and hoping that you'll be back tomorrow and
from His Heart when we'll have part two of this
last lesson in the Bold as a Lion series. Be
with us on Thursday, when Pastor Jeffshreeve will open up
God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real
hope from God's Heart here on from his Heart. From

(24:38):
his Heart is the listener supporting broadcast ministry of doctor Jeffshreeve,
celebrating twenty years of broadcasting the truth and love to
a lost and a hurting world. Remember, no matter what,
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
Find out more at from his Heart dot org.